1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device used, e.g., for high power control, and a method of manufacturing thereof.
2. Background Art
International Patent Application Publication No. WO00/65888 discloses a technique for connecting a plurality of substrates together by means of a joint member. The joint member has a plurality of leads held together by base films. The joint member can be bent in any direction. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2010-232254 discloses a technique for connecting a plurality of ceramic substrates together by means of bent wiring patterns.
Connecting a plurality of substrates together by means of terminals typically requires that such terminals be mounted on the substrates, resulting in a reduced component mounting area of the substrates. Therefore, it is desirable to connect a plurality of substrates without using terminals, as disclosed in the above publications.
However, the joint member disclosed in the above Publication No. WO00/65888 is disadvantageous in that the joint member is manufactured by sandwiching a plurality of parallelly arranged leads between upper and lower base films and then bonding these base films together, which requires a dedicated machine tool resulting in increased manufacturing cost. In order to avoid this problem, a flat cable may be used for connecting a plurality of substrates together. However, since flat cables have an irregular surface, they cannot be automatically transferred by a holding device such as a suction holding device, resulting in reduced throughput of the manufacturing process.
The technique disclosed in the above Publication No. 2010-232254 is disadvantageous in that in order to cut a ceramic substrate into a plurality of smaller substrates, small holes are formed in the ceramic substrate by irradiating the substrate with one laser pulse at a time while avoiding damage to the wiring patterns connected to the substrate, meaning that this cutting process requires significant time to complete, thus reducing the throughput of the manufacturing process.